Slashdot Mirror
Waymo Self-driving Cars Are Having Problems Turning Around Corners (siliconangle.com)
Alphabet's Waymo has long been regarded as the leader in autonomous vehicle development and technology, but all might not be as well as it seems at the company, according to a report published Tuesday. From a report: The Information quoted a number of unnamed Waymo insiders who claim the vehicles being used in the Arizona ride-hailing test have numerous problems. The test, which launched in November, is meant to be converted to a full commercial service later this year. The report claimed that the autonomous Chrysler Pacifica struggles to handle a number of driving tasks and even goes as far as annoying human drivers around them. Top among the problems is an apparent issue with turning left. "The Waymo vans have trouble with many unprotected left turns and with merging into heavy traffic in the Phoenix area, especially on highways," the report noted. "Sometimes, the vans don't understand basic road features, such as metered red and green lights that regulate the pace of cars merging onto freeways." If having problems turning left isn't bad enough, they also apparently on occasion have problems turning right. One woman claimed that she almost hit a Waymo vehicle as it suddenly stopped while trying to make a right turn.
These issues trouble human drivers too. In what reality do we have AI that is better than humans at adapting? Not this one.
Luckily she'd looked up from her phone just in time.
I saw a Waymo truck on the highway the other day. Maybe it was an 18-wheeler, I don't remember. It was pretty cool looking with all the sensors.
I really cannot fathom these monstrosities on the same road as myself. Time and time again it has been proven that a human driver is needed to intervene to keep these 'auto'mobiles in check. Yet, each one of these companies claims they'll be fully autonomous within a year or so, and each time it gets delayed again and again. If there's any indicator where we're at, just take a look at the newly released chat with the former Telsa worker. When will Silicon Valley and its ilk stop spreading false hopes and flat out lies to appease investors, it's starting to look like Trumpgate part 2. It is most likely at least a decade or 5 away from reality, maybe more so for the streets of London. Many more will die in the same likes as in the Tempe, AZ accident. It's going to take a revolutionary AI, one that hasn't been built yet to truly make this a reality. Robots are def not here to take our jobs or take over the world. If anything, it will create even more work for us humans, assuming we don't get ran over in the process...
Typical Amercian then
It sounds like the car is too meek. Waiting for proper sized gaps in traffic including safety margins, before turning left / right / merging etc.
Instead they need to be more assertive, like Teslas. Grab any gap no matter how small, and expect other cars to slow down or swerve away. If they don't, blame the other driver, accuse them of being pedos while sobbing to the NYT.
More like Tesla.
When I was in high school, my sister had a friend who was deathly afraid of turning left from one busy street to another. She just didn't get the whole, "inch out until the light turns yellow, and you're sure oncoming traffic is gonna stop, and then complete your turn" thing. So, swear to god, she used to make three right hand turns instead. She drover her father's old '70 Buick Electra 225 4-door and that thing was like an aircraft carrier. But it had the first electric seats I ever saw and had the bucket seats instead of a bench in the front, which I though was cool.
In summary, as long as you can make a sufficient number of right-hand turns, you can get away without hanging a Louie.
You are welcome on my lawn.
OK ... So we have several problems
First the Waymo software is likely a bit buggy. No surprise there. It'll take several years to work through that Wait til they encounter some of the blinking red and yellow arrows recently installed on traffic signals around here. I don't have the slightest idea what they really mean. Neither does anyone else.. Neither, I'll bet, will Waymo. On top of which at some times on some days, the sensors trying to read the signals will be looking directly into the sun.
Second, the Waymo cars try to drive safely and legally. Whereas human drivers generally try to drive as quickly as possible without being delayed by accidents or police traffic stops.
Third, I expect, is that autonomous vehicles in general are likely going to have trouble with some forms of bad weather -- especially heavy snow which humans who like to stay out o0f ditches handle by driving quite slowly and keeping moving. This is likely not going to be apparent in testing in Sunnyvale or Phoenix.
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
You may say I am a dreamer,
But I'm not the only one
I hope some day you'll join us
Then I will have won your gullible $
Woo Hoo;)
autonomous vehicles absolutely require infrastructure built into the roadways to support them, while those same roadways physically segregate self-driving vehicles from human-driven ones, pedestrians, bicycles, and others.
The ideal solution would be to redesign the road system so that autonomous vehicles could happily work however that would require trillions of dollars. so these cars are going to have iterative updates to learn and cope with all the situations even humans have to learn different road rules where I live we drive on the left driving in the U.S. meant swapping everything over even after 6 weeks still managed to get on the wrong side once. This is compounded by differences in different areas for various reasons even humans have trouble with these but I am sure an AI once they teach/program it will do much better. WRT the death of the pedestrian the driver should not have been on her phone as her car was at best an version 0.1 at his stage and her job was to watch the car and help teach it any new situation much like a learner driver and their instructor.
Your'e all thinking it, I just said it for you
I live a few blocks from the Waymo/X building in Mountain View, and see about 5-10 of their Pacifica minivans every day on my commute.
Waymo cars tend to be slightly cautious and very defensive in traffic, but they behave well and are very clear and communicative drivers.
Certainly I see more idiot human drivers on the same commute, especially since texting and driving seemingly became required for driving.
I also see a number of other brands around here but the Waymo integration looks much slicker and less like a science experiment. Theyâ(TM)ve also been doing this since 2009, itâ(TM)s not like they just got started on real roads yesterday.
The Apple cars are maybe the most excessively equipped (they have a fleet of Lexus SUVs with a ton of equipment on the roof).
Iâ(TM)ve almost gotten into an accident with a drive.ai car once and I saw another (Toyota I think?) slam the breaks seemingly for no reason and a Mercedes (donâ(TM)t remember the brand) that refused to move and the driver clearly took over. The GM Cruise project is also extremely common to see on the street of San Francisco and they seem to behave quite well too.
I was never a fan of the tiny bubble cars Google/Waymo drove up and down the streets here, mostly because they were too slow and used to hold up traffic a bit. But those cars literally had no steering wheel and was an interesting project. Iâ(TM)ve seen the blue Waymo semi trailers around quite a bit too and they are impressive.
Anyway, based on my own experience coexisting with self driving cars in my city for the last 4-5 years since moving here I call total bullshit on this article.
Also i wish people would stop using the botched Uber project as a reference for safety. Those idiots did a lot of damage to the future of self driving cars. Itâ(TM)s amazing that they disabled the built in safety features of the Volvo.
I do own a Tesla and drive it in autopilot on the freeway and in stop/go traffic. I canâ(TM)t imagine having to suffer my commute without it. I arrive more rested and relaxed to work, and feel safer as a result going home after a long day when iâ(TM)m tired and less focused. Roadtrips are also more fun now that I can take longer glances at scenery and I find that I donâ(TM)t feel nearly as tired when I arrive.
that with more debugging, they're hoping to turn the corner on the problems.
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
It is not going to happen on regular roads as we know them. Instead some big corporation is going to build a new city (possibly around a new campus) where regular cars will be banned and all trafic will be autonomous and roads will be smart as well with sensors, broadcasts, and what not. It will be so much simpler (for the AI) and so much more convenient for the humans. And once the benefits are obvious, other cities will follow suit. Building a city from scratch was Walt Disney's dream btw.
”One woman claimed that she almost hit a Waymo vehicle as it suddenly stopped while trying to make a right turn.”
If you almost hit someone because they stopped suddenly... that’s on you, not the other driver.
Don’t drive like an idiot.
#DeleteChrome
One woman claimed that she almost hit a Waymo vehicle as it suddenly stopped
Then don't tailgate. Idiot.
News at 11.
I'd like to hear Waymo's side of the story as I could imagine that the vehicle may have stopped during a right turn because it detected a hazard that was real (maybe a child running towards the road) or not real (paperbag flying towards the road). I also find the wording "the vans don't understand basic road features, such as metered red and green lights that regulate the pace of cars merging onto freeways" strange. Surely metered lights are not a basic road feature but something quite rare. I'm not saying that Waymo should not be able to handle those (surely they should!) but it does not seem to be a major failure either.
Bummer, because corners are the only thing that cars are turning around. The rest of the time they are going straight ahead.
talking about LSD you don't want to be do 35-40 MPH on that no when it's open do 55+ MPH
responsible till they start cutting costs like uber and uber killed somebody
I Can't Turn Left!
^ First thing that struck me when RTFA
"Waymo Self-driving Cars Are Having Problems Turning Around Corners "
According to TFA, it should be "Waymo Self-driving Cars Are More Risk-Averse than Human Drivers."
Chrysler minivans have always had a huge turning radius.
It's simply evidence that the hype for this tech is well in excess of reality.
Boing Boing had a link to the reporter who originally broke the story which actually has useful information - https://twitter.com/amir/statu...
They're having waymo problems than they expected, then? Now I understand where the name "waymo" comes from.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Waymo reported that they drove something like 37,000 miles without a human interaction in November 2017. How does this add up, now knowing that they can't even navigate a normal intersection properly?
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
"The Waymo vans have trouble with many unprotected left turns"
I've said it before and i'll say it again. If they're having trouble making unprotected left turns, perhaps you should stop having Google Maps direct them to make unprotected left turns? And then PLEASE PROVIDE THAT UPDATE TO ME AS WELL!
Google Maps seems just fine for trips of moderate distance, but i've lost track of the number of times on shorter trips it has directed me to take side streets and then suggested that i make a left turn at an uncontrolled intersection onto a four+ lane road in Los Angeles in the middle of rush hour.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
Oh /.
Youre so cute when you take millennials submissions.
I also avoid left turns across double lanes if there's no traffic light, no center lane, and visibility is questionable. I'll still do it if in a hurry or traffic is otherwise light, but those are hair-raising. There's a lot of jerks on the road who drive too fast, are texting, etc, creating risks. If something goes wrong, there's not a lot of ways out.
I suppose one gets better over time when they do such turns often, just like any task, and by mostly avoiding them I'm not getting enough practice. But I'm at the age where I say, screwit, my approach has kept me alive for decades. A bot does have the ability to "look" both ways at once, though, so it has an advantage over a lone driver.
Table-ized A.I.
I had mixed feelings about the Uber crash when I heard about it. In the end though, it turned out that their car was a murder machine. The ability to automatically stop for a pedestrian in the road was turned off when full self driving was enabled. The car would run over anyone who just stepped in front of it, regardless of how much warning it had... it was unbelievable.
blinking arrows are a new thing and it's a kind of equivalent
My scenario wasn't a branch staying on the road, but just temporarily bending in the way of the road so that the driver, human or bot, temporarily pauses until they understand what's happening.
But in general, the bot-driver will probably lack "common sense" in many situations, and present "odd" behavior, at least from a human perspective.
For example, it may slam on the breaks because a plastic bag is tumbling across the road. Most human drivers would probably slow down a bit but not outright stop because the humans know a plastic bag poses no risk.
Bot programmers may add a "plastic bag" subroutine to mirror such behavior, but some new situation will come up they didn't anticipate. Over time, the bot-car will get better, though, as more sub-cases are added to its "experience bank".
I don't believe lack of common sense is a reason to give up on bot-cars, for they do better than humans on other metrics. They don't have to be perfect, just better than human drivers on average. They just "fail differently", to mis-borrow Apple's old motto.
Table-ized A.I.
"Chrysler Pacifica struggles to handle a number of driving tasks and even goes as far as annoying human drivers around them"
I can't blame Waymo when all the car reviews say the same basic thing.
Maybe Waymo should replace the logos on the side of their cars with mannequins of little old ladies behind the wheel. That might make people feel better about their driving.